


Dark Archives

by glorious_clio



Category: Star Wars
Genre: Gen, Kiv Hyperlast (OC)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 14:25:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6054888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_clio/pseuds/glorious_clio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Come along with Kiv Hyperlast as she is commissioned by Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa to restore the Jedi Archives.  There are brief throwaway mentions of archives in the Force Awakens.  It thrills me that my chosen profession is in the Star Wars universe, so naturally, I ran with it.  I can't help myself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dark Archives

“How in the hell did I let you talk me into this, Senator?” **  
**

Peals of laughter echoed through the mess of the Jedi Temple, ruined by fire and smoke and time that Kiv Hyperlast, then a young, part-time archivist at the Galactic Senate, remembered watching from a distance.  She had visited the Jedi Temple once during her apprenticeship, back when the archive was the envy of the Galaxy.  

Now she was back at a place that had become invisible.  No one spoke of the smoking ruins of the Temple, everyone pretended it hadn’t existed.  If you did notice it, it was a warning.  

Clutching a toolkit that contained basics of her profession (her datapad, note cards, pencils, acid free paper, a tape measure, band-aids, a pair of white gloves that would be ruined instantly) and being followed by her trusty D4M5 documentation droid, Kiv carefully stepped through the remains of the temple’s reading room, the vaulted ceiling open to the sky.  

“Face it, Master Hyperlast, you couldn’t resist the offer, or the challenge.” Senator Leia Organa stepped in front of her with a glint in her eye.  “Besides, what have you been doing since your mandatory retirement, anyway?”

Oh, Kiv knew Leia Organa wasn’t a senator anymore, didn’t have a planet anymore to be princess of, or represent in the new senate, but General didn’t fit in Kiv’s mouth somehow, and Jedi Master was… not exactly beyond belief. If anyone could become a Jedi out of sheer determination, it was Leia Organa, but somehow Kiv couldn’t get past the memory of the youngest Senator ever elected approaching her to ask about Padme Amidala, for whom she was named.  

And when Kiv explained that there were no records of her at the Senate Archives with a significant look, Leia had picked up on what she wasn’t saying.  

_The records are not here, but this isn’t the end of the conversation. It is not safe to discuss it now._

Of course Organa’s daughter could be trusted, but the reading room, and the stacks and the cold vault, were full of the Emperor’s spies.  

The fact remained that Kiv had never destroyed a record.  

She merely took the boxes home after deleting the public facing digital record, which were fragile anyway, along with all the records of Alderaan after that peaceful planet had been blown to bits.  The Emperor was determined that no trace of what he destroyed remain, except warnings. No one had ever really checked her work; two copies remained, one in the dark archive -which was nothing to do with the dark side or the Emperor, it was just a place to put high quality digital records. If the Emperor or his spies had found out, no doubt she would have been killed.

It wasn’t exactly bravery, or even a professional mandate that made her protect these records and smuggle them to relative safety. Though Kiv Hyperlast had worked for the Galactic Senate, she also recognized that the Emperor was trying to be careful to get rid of everything he felt didn’t belong in his Empire. That what he was doing was wrong, evil, plain and simple. Her one advantage was that he had never been to library school, and what he didn’t know about libraries, archives, and record management could have filled the famed Jedi Archives.  It should be a blessing that even a little of this mess could be salvaged. And she had a few tricks of her own; she had mastered her own profession, after all.

Coruscant had been under control of the Rebel Alliance for six months when Senator Organa had approached her to ask for her to help her and her brother.  Kiv agreed, the Emperor had taken her job away, and the Senate Archives had been moved from Coruscant to who knew where.  Before Leia could leave, Kiv brought her to the secret basement room that was crammed full of the unofficial record of the Old Republic. Or at least, everything that the Emperor had tried to eradicate was there.  Leia was silent in front of a tower of boxes marked Alderaan.  Kiv said nothing, but pulled another Alderaan box.  Silently, she pressed a set of Alderaani prayer beads in this warrior’s hands.  

“No,” Leia had tried to say, “It belongs to everyone.”

“It’s a duplicate,” Kiv replied truthfully. “And I’ll document its removal.’  

Leia left quickly after that, the prayer beads tied in a holy knot, jingling on her belt next to her lightsaber.  

Kiv shook herself from her remembrances as Luke Skywalker approached.  Leia had insisted that they were twins, but she hadn’t known Leia to have a sibling, and they didn’t look very much alike.  “Separated at birth,” Leia had said. Still, they seemed to orbit each other like binary suns. Kiv didn’t question further.  

“Can you help us?”  His blue eyes looked so big and childlike.

“I mean… it’s a really big mess,” Kiv said. “I’ve worked on a lot of projects, but….” She trailed off.  

It was almost impossible to describe the carnage of the Jedi Temple. The cost of life had been unbelievable, but she had no idea what had become of the information.  She had never seen a bigger mess, and this was the reading room. What condition would the rest of the materials be in?

And these impossibly young Jedi Masters in front of her would have no idea, either.  

“Let me make some calls.  For now, I want you to copy as much digital information as you can, make three copies, store them on three different servers.  This structure isn’t sound, and open roofs are bad for preservation. We’re going to have to box everything up and move it to another location.”

“Did you have a place in mind?” Luke asked.

Oh, archival gods and goddess and all the library saints, did she have to do everything?

* * *

They found her a long series of hangers. It wasn’t bad; after Rogue Squadron spent a week weather-proofing everything, she could at least control the temperature and humidity.  And the door locked.

She had contacted a former professional colleague, Windme Cosmicblast,  who was president of the Intergalactic Archives Association more than, lord, thirty years ago now.  But she had seen the rise of the empire, and it was an unspoken mandate to document Palpatine’s takeover. Kiv felt she could trust her, and she not only offered her guidance, but had put out a call to other professionals, who thankfully had agreed to help with this absolutely ridiculous project.  

It was a good day, though, when Han Solo and Leia Organa came to her house to pick up the materials she had protected since she was an apprentice, told to destroy so many records.  It gave her a certain amount of vindictive joy that everything from Kamino to Amidala to Alderaan were the first collections that would be available to researchers.  Kiv had processed them herself to an item level years ago. She knew they were perfect, and Lor San Tekka’s hands shook over the boxes of Alderaan records as he got the finding aids were ready to go.  But then, he had been one of the few survivors of that world, off planet when….

She took it upon herself to comb through the records of Bail Organa and Breha Antilles to send copies to Leia, for her to pass on to her tiny son. She responded with a heartfelt thank you and a request for a few more items that Kiv was more than happy to send along.   

The rest of the collection, however….  Well. At least her frustrations were shared:

“WHAT THE HELL IS ALL THIS SHIT?”

“It’s either Jedi records of council meetings or… no wait, why are all these podracing stats in here?”

“You don’t think Master Fantil had a gambling problem, do you?”

“He didn’t have anything to gamble!… Oh wait, there was a statement about three folders ago about how he lost his lightsaber in a very convoluted way. Think he might have pawned it?”

“How much is a lightsaber even worth?!”

“THIS LAST ARCHIVIST SUCKED. I CAN’T FIND ANYTHING.”

“THIS IS NOT HOW YOU PROCESS A COLLECTION. WHY DIDN’T YOU DOCUMENT ANYTHING?”

“Hey, I found a record of reference questions they got! Look at this one about Kamino and…okay I can see that they got this question…. and they answered it WITH WHAT???!!!  No wonder Master Kenobi went hunting for it!”  

“Shit, didn’t that lead to a battle?”

“WHY DIDN’T SHE CHECK THE DARK ARCHIVES? WE FOUND THIS INFORMATION LAST WEEK!”

“Okay, but in Master Jocasta’s defense, the metadata was shit.”

“WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING?  We don’t need FOURTEEN COPIES of the exact same speech draft.”

“CLEARLY THAT’S NOT RIGHT.”

“WHY DIDN’T THEY REACH OUT TO THE PROFESSION?”

Every time they finished a series, there was a collective sigh of relief because one more thing made sense. Tensions could be really high, but there was nothing more calming than taking a box of materials, rehousing them, and checking to see if the digital records survived. Sometimes this required some creative hunting through questionable metadata, but hey, her team were all Masters, too. Lor San Tekka was a metadata godsend; if he couldn’t find something, it couldn’t be found, and then he was happy to start anew. Finding aids were completed in record time. Checksums started to go more smoothly.

If there were digital records left over without being attached to a physical collection, she’d have to do more digging to see if they had another warehouse or storage facility, but for now, Kiv was content to have a double inventory going. And if there wasn’t a digital record, like for Kamino and the others, they created one from scratch.  That was almost easier.  

Palpatine really had no idea how to even begin deleting a record, or what that had even meant. He would be rolling over in his space dust if he had known his deletion of the digital records made their jobs simpler.  

And while the records spanned the Galaxy, there were also records of the Jedi themselves. Whenever she finished such a collection, she alerted Master Skywalker, who came to drink in what he could from the old Jedi Order with those big blue eyes of his. The best was when she found some vids of old Jedi Sword Masters demonstrating their techniques.  Kiv went out of her way to accommodate him for several reasons, not least of which was this was the most fulfilling project she had ever worked on. She was restoring the information was meant to be destroyed. It was lucky she did all she could for Skywalker, because one day he approached her after a particularly grueling day in front of his computer terminal with a few questions, and just happened to mention the fact, oh, by the way, my droid used to belong to Padme Amidala and Anakin Skywalker and probably has a lot of information in his memory.  

She made him sign a donor form right there and plugged in her D4M5 into his astrotech.  

 _Incredible._ Who would have thought she would one day see the secret, yet touching wedding of Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala?  There was nothing better than filling in the gaps of the collection.  

It was so satisfying to bring what was hidden in the dark back to the light.


End file.
